Personally I'm of a like mind and I consider this progress. I have a bunch of (smart, curious) daughters and I feel a real struggle against gender role orthodoxy when I'm trying to nurture their interests in legos and science and Tolkien and their friends are into American Girl dolls and Disney princesses.

With that said, you can see why retailers would be slow to drop gender categorization. For people who aren't particularly progressive on this issue, Amazon just made shopping harder. For the average adult shopping for kids' toys, I bet the single most valuable bit of information to predicting their purchase is the gender of the recipient.

Also if you are shopping for someone else's kids. If you don't know the kids interests it's a lot easier to look for toys of around that age and for the gender of the child. Sometimes its all the info you have.

Blindly relying on gender can lead to terrible presents. Plenty of girls do not like pink princesses, and plenty of boys do not like aggressive-looking action figures.

Ask about their interests, or get something generic enough that it's going to be fun for everybody.

A ball, or a game, or a puzzle - all safe

> Also if you are shopping for someone else's kids. If you don't know the kids interests it's a lot easier to look for toys of around that age and for the gender of the child.

If you are shopping for someone else's kids, how hard is it to talk (/text/email/etc.) to the parents about the kids interests?

  > If you are shopping for someone else's kids, how hard is it to talk
  > (/text/email/etc.) to the parents about the kids interests?

Or even talk to the kids about the kids' interests (with written permission from the parents and social services and in the presence of at least three independent board-certified chaperons, of course).

How? There are kids in my child's class at school I've never met; I don't know their parents and in some cases there are never occasions where we share geographical location (their kids are picked up by carers). Schools don't give out the parents information; relaying contact details through children under about 8yo is impossible.

Then what? Arrange to meet them at their home to talk to their child for 30s about what they want for their birthday (that's in my price range) - the whole process is costing more than the present at this point.

Am I right in thinking you're not a parent?

Asking a parent you know for ideas for a party present for a kid is quite reasonable, asking the child won't help unless it's a child you're close to and you're spending a considerable sum and I'd warrant know the child's personality pretty well.

a bit harder than just having the filters.

> a bit harder than just having the filters.

But, given that kids that don't conform to gender stereotypes of interests exist, probably infinitely more useful.

Heck, even for kids that conform to gender stereotypes to the extent that all of their interests are within the scope expected for their gender, its still vastly more useful to get direct information from them or their parents about their interests, because its very rare that any kid's interests will be cover all of what is within the gender stereotype even if it is contained within the gender stereotype.

You must be the worst shopper. It is not that hard.

> You must be the worst shopper.

You must really be an arse hole to feel the need to belittle people just because they disagree with you.

Forcing adults who would automatically think "trucks for boys, dolls for girls" to think about their choices is, in itself, valuable. As a child I was given dolls because I was a girl. I had absolutely no interest in dolls. Nor in trucks. I wanted building toys, animals, and dinosaurs.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that educational toys should be in a specific gender category. On the other hand, the number of tween-age boys into American Girl dolls has to low. I don't think "forcing" your customer to do anything is a good idea. I don't see the problem with the gender filters for those who want them and find them useful. It isn't a toy can ONLY be in one category or the other. I believe they are doing this just to pander to a small group of activists.

Retailers might be making more money selling gender-targeted products - particularly rebadged versions of the same products.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JDmb_f3E2c

Maybe we need to have girl-branded thought-provoking toys in the meantime to deal with parents that force these stereotypes on their children. Princess model rockets and Frozen science kits.

I doubt most parents force anything on kids these days least likely gender specific stuff. It's human nature, girls generally like girly stuff and boys like guy stuff and that's human nature and it is not ever going to change over the course of human history.

A lot of interests are tied to gender, probably more so than not. I'm more amazed that you're amazed that it should be the other way around. Even more amazing if the story is true that Amazon would try to change the core of human nature with a web site.

Sometimes you don't know a kid's interests, and their gender is the best heuristic available (and a pretty good one at that). Obviously if it's e.g. my daughter and I know she likes trains she's going to get trains, but not everyone buying a toy for a kid has that much information.

It's still amazing how much we determine maturity by numerical age and not maturity or experience.

Point being, pretending to be off put by a reasonable and logical thing doesn't make you correct.